Walmart: “My Way or the Highway”

Walmart has decided that the U.S should migrate to Chip and PIN cards with comments like, “Let’s go directly to Chip-and-PIN” and, “As far as we are concerned, signature is a waste of time. It has to be PIN or nothing.”

I have to wonder when Walmart decided it could decide what’s good for the rest of us, but there’s more. Not the least of which is the fact that we know it isn’t as secure as the card companies would like us to believe.

I’ve blogged about RFID technology and its flaws. You can see what I’ve turned up here. There are several entries on the subject.

It’s important to note that RFID contactless cards and Chip and PIN are different. Contactless cards are not secure. They can’t be cloned easily but it’s easy to get the information off the chip and they still have the mag strip on the back. Chip and PIN technology is considerably more sophisticated but if you’ve gone through the archives, you know that the technology has been hacked. And they will continue to have mag strips for some time to come so they can be used on older POS terminals.

There is one other very important factor; End to end encryption. I don’t have to tell you that end to end encryption isn’t universal. Not by a long shot. Ask Heartland Payment Systems. They, and others, are pushing for it but we’re just not there yet.

So why is Walmart pushing for Chip and PIN? We can assume it’s all about money.

Sources for this post:

http://www.storefrontbacktalk.com/securityfraud/wal-mart-its-time-for-chip-and-pin-in-the-u-s/

http://www.storefrontbacktalk.com/securityfraud/chip-and-pin-hack-is-so-scary-because-it-surprised-no-one/

Similar Posts:

• Canadian credit cards delay chip rollout
• Are you ready for an increase in credit card fraud?
• Chip and PIN continues to shift fraud
• U.S. is slow to use safer credit cards
• Chip and PIN is hackable too